The National Institutes of Health issued a letter from the
Director on September 4 which includes a number of useful links to aid members
of the scientific community who may have questions about this crisis or how to
help those impacted by the hurricane. An excerpt of this letter with these
links is below:
This crisis has elicited tremendous generosity from the biomedical research community. We are grateful for the many of you who have expressed a willingness to help, particularly with the placement of students, postdoctoral fellows, and investigators. To keep everyone informed of developing events and to help NIH manage the outpour of offers of assistance, we have created website pages (http://www.nih.gov/about/director/hurricanekatrina/index.htm and http://grants.nih.gov/grants/katrina/index.htm), and we are partnering with a
number of organizations. A website recently created by the Association of
American Medical Colleges (http://www.aamc.org/katrina.htm ) for example, will help broker
interactions between medical school researchers (from students to
investigators) who cannot return to their classes or laboratories in the
foreseeable future and would like temporary placement elsewhere, and those of
you offering placement, including the NIH intramural program. We are
also partnership with other organizations to provide similar services for
those not directly affiliated with a medical school. The NIH website will
list those URLs as soon as they become available. We will continue to
update the post-Katrina information on the NIH website as we hear about your
needs.
We have also been asked by
many what specifically can NIH do for investigators and institutions in
this time of crisis. NIH is ready to provide assistance in a number of
ways - from extensions in time that include personnel costs and replacement of
equipment, supplies, and unique resources damaged or lost as a result of the
storm; to flexibility in grant application deadlines. NIH also works with
the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to ensure that investigators and
their institutions have opportunities to obtain maximum support. We have
already published two hurricane-related Notices in the NIH Guide, and a third,
containing additional information will be published shortly.
Hurricane-related information particular to investigators and their
institutions is also available at the NIH Office of Extramural Research website
(http://grants.nih.gov/grants/katrina/index.htm). We encourage you to visit
this and the parent NIH website for the most recent information.
